Abstract: Smart grid with high integration of the information and communication technology and the physical power system is an inevitable trend of the modern power system. For meeting the national strategic development demand of the emerging smart grid industry in China, universities and colleges must fully consider the industry requirement and the changes in the engineering education mode and actively cultivate talents with inter-disciplinary knowledge and innovative ability. Based on the outputs of the study and practice project approved by the Ministry of Education and carried out by China Three Gorges University, this paper systematically introduced the practice on cultivating inter-disciplinary, innovative and practical talents majored in smart grid information engineering (SGIE). Firstly, problems and objectives involved in the talent cultivation by a local university were analyzed with the consideration of the fourth industrial revolution. Secondly, the philosophy and idea incorporated in the SGIE major talent cultivation were proposed. Thirdly, the detailed specific measures to establish the talent cultivation system were presented, in which the courses addressed by engineers, the synthetic projects and inter-disciplinary research team based talent cultivation were specially designed and described on the basis of multi-agent collaboration and industry-directed, problem-oriented, case-guided and outcome-based considerations. It's hoped to provide the SGIE major hosted colleges with a valuable reference for cultivating the talents needed for the smart grid industry that is an emerging sector of strategic importance.